Story of the Strange: "The first night I slept in the room--I awoke to see what appeared to be three balls of light --circling near my bed. The balls would circle, zoom-in, zoom-out and then circle again. This did not frighten me, it merely intrigued me. This continued to happen frequently during the remaining 5 years that I resided in the house... This did not frighten me, however, what did frighten me though, was the "other" activity in the house - a being or apparition which tried to lift me up and out of the bed. It would start by gently pulling my blankets and sheets off of me and then slowly begin to levitate me. I would always awaken when this happened--and I would grab ahold of the sides of my bed and hang on for dear life. The ordeal would always cease there and I would lie frightened until I fell back to sleep." (from Shadowlands)
A tragic story of young love cut short when the girl gets squished by Godzilla: Our love was so true, but now she's three foot two, and she used to be five foot eleven. Her death was unintentional, but now she's two dimensional, my angel is truly in heaven. - Song by Arrogant Worms
If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea. - Richard Hofstadter (from Kishore Balakrishnan's Psychic RAM web log)
A well-meaning person posted the URL for something called "Magical Rose" to a few email lists we're on. It was one of those 'share this with a friend' thing. Well, the other day, we decided to get a fire-wall program, just because we don't like the idea of people sneaking around our hard drive (it's slow enough already!) without us giving the okay. So, firewall up and ready, we decided to give a little test to this seemingly innocent and loving site - YUP - it tried to read our NetBios, which is the doorway in for being able to read about everything we have on our hard drive. And it failed and got tattled on - Cool! *grin* (Overall, this is just ANOTHER good reason why this kinda 'pass this along to your friends' email stuff shouldn't be, besides the obvious.)
So, the secret has been revealed to me - the gift John ordered for my birthday finally came in - he got me a Fuji Digital Camera! YAY! So now, not only can I redesign the blog to include at least one image I can update regularly, and not only can I take a zillion photos of cool stuff and upload them easily, and not only can I have a lot of fun with it, but I can also take a lot of photos of subject matter that I can translate into watercolor renderings. There's some very mundane looking things that once you paint them in watercolor come out like real art - LOL - and I haven't been able to replace the battery in my SLR yet, and then there's the whole expense of getting a shot (buying and developing the film) solely for the sake of making a watercolor of it. I can also sneak up on the dogs when they're laying in the sun or curled up and take disgustingly cute pictures of them looking disgustingly cute. Oh, the humanity! *grin*
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. - Denis Waitley, Seeds of Greatness
The very first night I spent at Kristen and John's house was also the first night they spent there. Their van broke down, stranding us for the night while they were moving in. It was unfortunate, since the electricity wasn't turned on yet, and all we had to eat were some peanuts and tea. *grin* I still won't drink red zinger and I stay away from honey-roasted peanuts. It was not all bad though, if the van had not broken down I might not have seen the "dark lady". At twilight I went out walking around the property. Their house is out in "California cow country", and there was a lot to explore. I started out by climbing the hill across the (very small) road from their driveway. The water tank for the house is up there, so there was a nice path to the top. Just before I got to the point where I could see over I heard something behind me and turned around. I saw a large wolf right in the middle of the path. It was only a wolf for a second, then it turned into a bush, but I KNOW there was not a bush there before because it was blocking the path I just walked up. That had me spooked, but I could feel that it was not a threat to me so I continued up the path to the top. When I got up there I could see a large field that was bordered on one side by the hill I was on, and on the other by a curving stream. Nearly straight ahead of me was a windmill, and to the right of that was a large stand of sage. What caught my attention in the scene though, was a tall woman who was standing in the middle of the sage. She was facing away from me, towards the stream. She had dark hair that reached down past her knees, but that was all I could really tell in the fading light. I stood there for several minutes just watching and she never moved at all, even her hair was perfectly still in the slight breeze. She had a very strong presence, even from my vantage about 100 feet away I could "feel" her. It never crossed my mind to try to get her attention, I knew that she was aware of me. In the end, I walked back down the hill because it was getting to dark to see, but the next day I walked out into the field to check it out. There was nothing tall enough in the sage to look like a person, and there were no footprints on the sandy ground. I would later find out that the spot she was standing had a special significance, but that's not my story to tell. *grin* I've never seen her again, but I've felt her presence during several of my visits, and even once had a sort-of-conversation with her telepathically. As far as I can tell she is like an embodiment of the land or of that kind of land. None of the preexisting labels for supernatural creatures seemed to fit, I've always thought of her as "elf lady" or "dark lady" and she doesn't seem to mind the title. Here's a picture I did of her in the field, it captures the feeling, if not the details of the scene.
Memecentral is a different sort of lead in and explanation or approach to conscious creation than I'm used to, but intriguing nonetheless. If you're interested in more of this angle, read from the main page as well.
Apparently the 'world teacher' Maitreya (Christ, Messiah, Krishna, Maitreya Buddha, Imam Mahdi, etc.) has been hitching rides with people to tell them Jesus is coming back and then just vanishing from the cars - which has the tendency to FREAK OUT the drivers of the vehicles just a wee bit. *grin*
I'd say that most of the ghost stories I've found deal with hauntings in houses that have been around for at least 100 years or so. Well, today I found a site about trailers (manufactured homes) being haunted that takes the idea VERY SERIOUSLY. (NOT!) *grin*
I'm beginning to think these kinds of stories are either about dimensional shifts or time shifts - or overlapping realities of some sort: "The last of the pterodactyls (flying reptiles with leathery wings and long, toothy beaks) died about 100 million years ago, according to established scientific opinion. But in the experience of a number of startled French workmen, the last one died in the winter of 1856 in a partially complete railway tunnel between the St. Dizier and Nancy lines. In the half-light of the tunnel, something monstrous stumbled toward them out of a great boulder of Jurassic limestone they had just split open. It fluttered its wings, croaked, and died at their feet. The creature, whose wingspan was 10 feet 7 inches, had four legs joined by a membrane, like a bat. What should have been feet were long talons, and the mouth was arrayed with sharp teeth. The skin was like black leather, thick and oily. At the nearby town of Gray, the creature was immediately identified by a local student of paleontology as a pterodactyl. The rock stratum in which it had been found was consistent with the period when pterodactyls lived, and the limestone boulder that had supposedly imprisoned the winged reptile for millions of years was found to contain a cavity in the form of an exact mold of the creature's body." (from Blue Moon News)
Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success." -- Denis Waitley, Seeds of Greatness
Bizarre Story Du Jour: "In 1982 in the town of Te Kuiti, New Zealand, railway workers extending a track were cutting away at some mudstone, ( a type of sedimentary rock,) when one of the men cried out. He pointed to a small cavity he had uncovered in the rock, twelve feet below the ground. Inside the cavity was a live frog. And it didn't end there.. .. another one was discovered in another rock near the discovery of the first one. Mr. L. Andrews, the supervisor, stated that it would have been quite impossible for them to have fallen into any holes.... and ... A horned lizard that was found quite alive in a block of stone: "So solid as to preclude the entrance of the smallest insect," was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington by Judge Houghton of New Mexico in 1853. The lizard lived for two days after its release." (from Blue Moon News)
Never let it be said that I don't support the arts. *grin*
From: Allucquere Rosanne Stone Subject: PGP: The Public Genitals Project
For immediate release:
You are invited to join
*** PGP, The PUBLIC GENITALS PROJECT ***
For the next week, as part of the Fifth Annual Cinematexas Short Film, Video and Performance Festival (http://www.cinematexas.org), live models wearing TFT color flatscreens over their genital areas are walking around Austin, Texas. The screens display images of genitals sent to the project's Internet server by interested contributors from around the world. The images are modified in real time according to a computer algorithm based on the number of times the words "SEX" and "VIOLENCE" appear on the web pages of CNN and MSNBC.
Contributing to the project is simple and easy. Just digitize your genitals -- by digital photo, scanning an analog photo, or scanning live -- and ftp the digitized photo by anonymous login to 207.170.74.6 . High resolution photos, rather than compressed jpegs, are preferred. All sexes and genders welcome.
The overall Project will be documented online at http://www.actlab.utexas.edu beginning Tuesday, 17 October 2000.
--------------------------
MORE INFORMATION
PGP, the Public Genitals Project, is designed to playfully question the boundaries between inside and outside, revealed and hidden, representation and reality. It deals quite literally with mapping body memories onto bodies, and with projecting body images from layer to layer of social presentation and representation from skin outward to clothing. It also collapses distance and time by using realtime imaging from sites around the world mapped onto bodies in Austin.
Each PGP unit consists of a video broadcast receiver, battery pack, two small loudspeakers, and two laptop computers with flat screens (backlit TFT type) worn by a person walking the streets of Austin. The computers are modified to allow the motherboards to be taped to the backs of the flat screens. In one version of the design the person is naked except for the screens, which are attached to suspenders and worn so they cover the genital areas front and back. In the second version the person is fully clothed except for cutouts over the genital areas front and back, within which the two screens are mounted. The receiver and battery pack are attached to a belt which is worn around the waist. Hardware and software development was done by teams of volumteers from the RTF Convergent Media program working out of the ACTLab, supervised by the artist.
In operation, participants worldwide send images of their genital areas via webcams to the Project server. The received images are digitally manipulated according to an algorithm driven by the number of times the words "sex" and "violence" appear on the webpages of CNN, MSNBC, and CBS. The digital manipulation abstracts the images; in other words, they cease to be representations of individuals' body parts, instead becoming more like imperfectly remembered things -- the more the terms "sex" and "violence" appear in the media, the more that actual body images recede toward imagined recollections. The images are then broadcast to the belt-mounted receiver, and displayed on the two flat screens. Concurrently, the loudspeakers present ethnographically recorded narratives of personal experiences with nudity, shyness, and desire, which are stored as sound files on the computers. The juxtaposition of images and physical body surface is meant to convey the illusion that the viewer is looking through a transparent electronic window at the surface of the wearer's body.
PGP, the Public Genitals Project Design Team:
Design and Concept: Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone
Project Assistants: Michael Allan; James Craig; Ryan Gibson; Todd
Gurkis; Kurt Korthals; Micah Magee; Emily Mae Smith.
Inspiration: Richard MacKinnon and the ACTLab/Convergent Media Seminar in Theory and Methods of an Unnameable Discourse, 1995-1999 (http://www.actlab.utexas.edu).
For further information contact Cinematexas, email:
cinematexas@cinematexas.org
Here's an interesting perspective on the presidential poll statistics and the politics involved in their presentaion. (link via Metafilter) I just like the idea that the public isn't as stupid and spoon fed or unconscious as is usually presented. *grin*
A long spooky story, but interesting... "Years ago, when I was about 13 I was spending the summer at my grandparents. They lived in a neighborhood that had no kids save one, a girl near my age, about eleven or so. We took turns spending the night at each other's house and hung around the big back yards. Nothing about her house bothered me per se, except for this one painting that hung in their upstairs hall. When you came up over the stairs Kim's room was directly across the hall with her brother's room and the bathroom to the right and her parent's room to the left. When you went into her room and turned around, there on the wall right by the bathroom door hung a 20x13 Margaret Keane portrait. (She's the lady that paints those kids with the HUGE black eyeballs.) At the time I knew nothing about art and had no idea who Margaret Keane even was, all I knew was that picture gave me the creeps. Done with a charcoal background, the picture showcased a solitary figure - a girl about fifteen - from the shoulders up. Her hair was brown and cut very, very short, she wore a bluish-gray top with a white collar and her expression was somber - not to mention the eyes were huge and dark, big black holes in the middle of this kid's face. It was creepy and one always got the feeling that they were being watched whenever they were in Kim's room or going down the hall. Her brother refused to even sleep upstairs because the picture gave him the willies.
The last time I spent the night there we had stayed up late watching some movie and fell asleep in the living room. I awoke near dawn and had to go to the bathroom. Not giving much thought to the fact that I'd have to pass that picture to get to the toilet I headed up over the stairs. I was four steps up and turning on the landing when I felt terrified. I looked up to see a shadow on the wall by Kim's door. I stood there, wondering if it was Kim's mom, Judy, or was it something else? The call of nature made up my mind on whether or not to continue and I cautiously made my way up the stairs, hoping and praying it was Judy. In the early morning light I found the hall empty. Scared to death I slipped into the bathroom and clicked the lock as quick and quietly as I could. I did my business and wondered how the heck I was going to get back downstairs without scaring myself again. I had just finished washing my hands when I saw it - the knob was turning slowly back and forth, as if someone was trying to get in.
I froze for a minute, then, telling myself it was probably Kim, I flipped the lock and opened the door way to an empty hall. I looked up at that picture to find the eyes CLOSED! At this point I was ready to cut and run, especially when I saw that damn shadow again, reflecting on the wall from inside Kim's room. Something was not right and I wasn't about to stick around and find out what it was. I ran back downstairs, hiding beneath a blanket until everyone else got up. I made my way back upstairs to collect my stuff to find the picture's eyes were again open (I knew I wasn't seeing things, those eyes were gigantic, it would be impossible to mistake them being open or closed). As I was coming out of the bedroom I stopped to stare at that evil picture, I don't know how I knew, but I knew that it was a terrible portrait and there was a lot of evil behind it. Judy came up behind me and commented on how sad the girl looked, and then she stated on why she'd bought it: "the poor thing looked like it had lost its very soul". I had to agree, it didn't have a soul all right! The look in those eyes was the darkest, most evil glare I could ever recall seeing and it made every hair on my body stand upright. That picture was looking right at ME and it felt like I was being PULLED towards it. Judy spoke to me again and the pull stopped, I turned to talk to her and felt whatever it was watching me. The phone rang and Judy went to answer it, leaving me with that horrid picture, I turned back to it to find two tiny pinpoints of red in the middle of those dark, black eyes. I'd seen this picture hundreds of times at this point and I knew there was no red in those eyes. That was it for me, I told Kim I had to go and I got the hell out as fast as possible.
I never spent another night with Kim after that, we grew up. . .we both got married and had kids, seeing each other on occasion. One time, after Judy's death, I made it a point to ask Kim what had happened to the picture. She told me that when they'd built a house in the country when she was in high school, they'd hung the picture in their new living room and it didn't seem to apppreciate its new home. The picture would never stay up, constantly falling to the floor. Finally, tired of rehanging it, they put it into storage and weird things started happening - footsteps in the attic, things moving around up there by themselves - a highly suspicious and old world Catholic, her father took the painting and attempted to burn it in their field. Only thing was - it WOULDN"T burn. They doused it with gasoline, stuck it in a grill with charcoal - it didn't even get soot covered. About that time her brother, Mark, hosed the picture down, frame and all, bagged it up, weighted it down and threw it over a bridge. After that all the strange occurences stopped and her mother refused to purchase any more paintings.
This was twenty odd years ago now, and I've seen hundreds of Keanes over the years. They were the rage of the seventies and early nineties. People even have sites dedicated to the artist - but I've never seen a copy of that picture, nor have I ever gotten the same bizarre feelings of paranoia around Keane portraits. No one knows where Kim's mom purchased the painting, nor do they know the history that accompanied it - all we DO know, is that it was evil and carried something unexplainable with it. (from Shadowlands)
Ralph Nader barred again from the debates just after he sued the Debate Commission for excluding him the FIRST time. "Mark my words, this is the debate commission's last hurrah," Nader said. You know, can you really blame them from excluding Nader? I mean, if they let him join in the debates, it would become SO painfully obvious that Bush and Gore think and debate and dance around questions in the same exact politically molded way. We've all gotten lulled into accepting the "way politicians are" (snort) and what their supposed to talk about, and Nader would be too much of a contrast to that. Heh heh. John was listening to the debates in the car yesterday and told me someone had asked about young people and regaining their interest and Bush responded something about the defense planning while Gore said that healthcare was important to EVERYONE - or something like that. I couldn't bother to be shocked or annoyed, it just really brought home to me how much these guys and the whole political/government system as it stands are a part of the old guard that's just crumbling away. But that's okay, because there's a lot of cool stuff that's waiting in the wings to emerge at just the right time. I don't believe in any of that 'new world order' conspiracy stuff - I just believe that most of the people who don't put energy into this old stuff are too busy thinking of processes and inventions that DO work and that ARE supportable and it will make us wonder why we didn't let go of all this old crap sooner.
I mean, let's just say that you're in this club, and it's very popular. The club used to be really cool and exciting with new ideas, but after a while it just started to be the same thing over and over again, and any 'new ideas' were then seen as a threat to the survival of the club itself. You can spend all of your time trying to get the club to see your point of view, putting energy into struggling with them within this one framework. OR - you can just go off and do your own thing, put energy into what YOU think is important, and realize that you're pretty damn happy not even thinking about this other club. (I guess if you grow up as a geek, you come to this conclusion sooner or later anyway. And, BTW, geeks are just people who express their own individual interests and passions that don't usually match up with what we're told COOL is - if a supermodel ever admitted to a passionate interest in gardening, for instance, and read books, talked to others about it, and spent her off hours in her garden, she could be considered a geek.) A "cool" friend of mine once said, "You know, all along I thought it was the popular people that others followed and who set trends and were making things happen, but all of that amounts to nothing in the end - all along, it was geeks who were REALLY doing stuff." Wow.
I really liked the sitcom Titus last season. The format was refreshing, kinda like the 70's show - showing things that people 'shouldn't' do, and in a way, showing people the way they really are, instead of having every episode be a moralistic lesson learned or something. So far this season though, for some reason it feels overly harsh to me. I've seen two episodes, and it's just been this disfunctional family always being mean and sarcastic to each other - not that that can't be funny once in a while, but I found myself really wanting something HAPPY to happen to them. Instead of laughing, I found myself pitying the characters for being so desperate for love in one way or another and then never getting what they need. Maybe some character development would help. But then I think of what Frye from Futurama said ~ "People don't want change and character development - if they had the characters change it would just remind people of how mundane and pointless and stagnant their OWN lives are."
How many of you wake up in the morning with a song in your head, or at least a line from a song? Okay, now how many of you were singing THIS: "No, there's nothing wrong with killer robots from Venus." - what the heck was I dreaming about anyway? *grin*
Don't let THEM manipulate even one more of your thoughts! Get your very own Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie - An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating Mind-Control. *grin*
Here's a Metaphysical Mad Lib to send you over the edge of confusion, if the Random Surrealism generator didn't do the job 100%. *grin* "Last time Saturn went retrograde when Planet X was in the House of scooter, my days were just one dictionary after another. This time, however, I was determined to crush my impulses and avoid any NEW dictionary. So... the day seemed to be going squishy until Noon, when, while chewing a/an ribbon, I had the impulse to be painting the ribbon instead! So, trusting my impulses to steer me clear of danger, I took that telephone of faith! I was flat with excitement at the prospect of what was sitting for me. At the time this seemed really pretentious, but little did I know that Planet X was conjunct with my ascending candle. Then, in the middle of painting, my bottle just tumbled!! It just goes to show you that you can't boogie your own spatula when the Laser is square with your Harmonica."
During the day (technically, yesterday) I took a nap and was rather aware of all the time I was in the hypnogogic state - that space between awake and full sleep/dream. I heard a lot of different voices say odd things - sometimes it seemed to be directed at me, sometimes not. Mostly I just observed it. I guess if I put some conscious intention into it, I could cultivate more awareness during that time. (pausing for deep thought) Interesting.
Beware the steel plated mandrill!! I wish Captain Planet wouldn't bribe policemen with me. What fun it is to go joyriding in beer barrels in a one-nailfile underwater dictaphone! (Confused? There's help for you yet! You will understand ALL once you get your own Random Surrealism - go on - everybody's doing it.)
Better late than never - today's scary story: "I was 24, living with my mother, my sister and my 2 year old niece. One night I woke up, and looked up into the darkness. This "thing" flew down from the ceiling, straight at me with its arms out (I can still see it). It looked like a cross between a gargoyle and an alien, it looked so evil. It sounds silly, but I was so terrified, that I ran out of my room (screaming) into the living room to be with my mother. I was shaking uncontrollably, and I sat with her for quite a while before I could convince myself that it was "just a dream", and I went back to bed with no further problems. Well, a few months down the road, my sister was at home with her friend, Kelly - who seems to have some sort of connection with the paranormal, like her mother - and she sent her down the hall to get a towel for my niece (the linen closet is down the hall in my mother's room). Kelly came back a couple minutes later, white as a sheet. Now, my sister and Kelly are always talking about stuff like this, but this is what really freaked me out. She said that there was something in my mother's room, and it was a threatening presence. She then went on to describe it: about 3 feet tall, gray, kind of a cross between a gargoyle and something. I had never mentioned anything to my sister, and the only thing I had told my mother is that something scared me. I had never described what I saw to anyone. In another related incident, prior to my "sighting", my mother was trying to sleep one night in her room, and as she is about to fall asleep, something breathed near her - kind of a sharp exhale "Hah" right in her ear. She woke up the next morning with scratches on the middle of her back, and the freaky thing is, she slept alone, and there were only three, long (about 6") thin scratches on her back. Needless to say, I am very happy to be out of that house!" (from Shadowlands)
Book-A-Minute SF/F - this is hilarious, but you have to have a sense of humor about your favorite authors to appreciate it. For instance, I almost died laughing at the short summaries of Robert Jordan's books - loved the Wheel of Time series (although I only got up to Crown of Swords and refused to read any more until he FINISHES the series - luckily, I'm planning on living a long life. ) but the summaries are too close for comfort - LOL. Thanks for the link, Laurie!
The idea is that you get what you focus on and that each of us must choose for ourselves what deserves our attention. So when people say, "You're sticking your head in the sand," I interpret that to mean, "You're not paying attention to something I consider really important, so I will slam you in an attempt to wrest your attention back to my issue." Nobody ever said training to be a wizard wouldn't have its challenges. *grin*
Hey TOM! I need to email you stuff to stop your boredom, and since your regular email isn't working, go get a temporary web-mail account and email me so we can communicate again. (No - I have never heard of a t-e-l-e-p-h-o-n-e.) *grin*
I was discussing the future of internet content presentation the other day with a friend - wondering which directions it would head in. Today another friend passed me a link to Poems That Go, a site that presents poems done with Flash animation or shockwave. It's really well done and cool to see, and they tell you before you click which version of which plug in you'll need and how to get it, and the file size, so those with low bandwidth (ahem) can be choosey. Stop by when you have a few moments and appreciate the artistry!
YAY! I get an official NOTHING t-shirt cuz it'sma birthday! Thanks Tom - I shall wear it proudly! (Also, if anyone asks me what I'm wearing, I can say "Nothing." *evil grin*)
Saw this link via ye olde referrer log and read her terrific story of evil green eyes. (Cool blog too, BTW!) Anyway - oddly enough, when I was looking up today's ghost stories, I passed by one called "green eyes" that I noted for some reason. So I'll go back there and see if I can find it again for ya. :-) I found it! Here's a clip: "My story starts when I was five or six, and it involves me and my older brother. We have two older brothers but this story only involved us to an extent. Here goes.... My older brother, Norman, was asked to take the scraps out one night after supper. It was a normal routine for each of us, but on that night, it would change his life forever. He walked outside to empty the scraps, and that's when this whole thing began... When he got to the spot where we dump the scraps, he noticed a pair of green eyes. He didn't pay much attention, considering that we did have dogs and cats, so he continued. After he was done, they were still there, but this time, they were looking up at him with a squint to them. He started calling all of the dogs and cats names, and none of them responded, and that really took him by surprise, especially with it being time for them to eat. He noticed that the eyes was all he could see, and he got scared at that point. As he took a closer look, this thing smiled at him, and at that point, he threw the pot at it and ran back into the house to tell us what had happened. We all laughed and went about our business, but I could tell that he was telling the truth. That was the first, but still not the last of Green Eyes." It's a really long story, (and rather scary - more weird stuff happens to them) but to read the whole thing, click here.
I love this one - a haunted M&M factory! "My dad worked in an M&M factory around 1990. He loved working there because he could eat all the M & M's he could eat. He told me that there were a couple of times he felt kind of weird, like there was a ghostly presence but ignored it. But one day something happened he couldn't ignore. He was filling some tubes with M & M's (You know the kind you get around christmas and it has an M &M figure on top of it) then he turns around and he sees these boxes slowly moving and all of a sudden they fell on two girls, but they didn't get hurt. Then he was on some kind of lift working the machinery and all of a sudden he felt that ghostly presence again. He turned around and he saw a ghost of a woman who was dressed like she came from the 1920's. Big hat and flowery dress. He only saw her for 15 seconds but it's something he would never forget." (from Shadowlands)
I thought, 'I wonder if there are any ghost stories out there related to birthdays,' and right off I find this one, which is close enough and rather cool, despite the somewhat tenuous birthday connection - *grin*: "This story has to do with multiple ghost sightings. Well, we start off on my birthday. Approx. nine whitnesses observed bobbing heads poking in and out from the side of my shed (under construction at the time). They were white glowing faces, almost with robes over their head. Two of us went back to investigate but found nothing. About one hour after the sighting, approx. four of us whitnessed multiple glowing spheres behind a tree nearby. Two of us are police officers, so we engaged the objects with our sidearms. Might I ad, this is a fairly dangerous area. The objects slowly dissapated and we found no evidence of any paranormal activity. The nine of us joined to go inside when we all whitnessed a glowing figure approx. fifteen meters down the back street(alley way). Again we engaged the being and instructed it to get down on the ground. At this time, the being quickly turned around and dissapeared." (from Shadowlands) Sounds kinda like the beings wanted the guy to lighten up and have a happy birthday - heh heh.
Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to my great friend, Sharon! Happy Birthday to my old college roommate and friend, Tori! October 16th is SUCH a cool day - LOL.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau (Thanks to Serena for this terrific quote!)
I've often thought that the greatest conspiracy ever was that conspiracies exist - what better way to distract people is there? I've also often thought that conspiracies are just another word for synchronicities, just seen through the filter of fear instead of joy or creativity. When you think of a product and then immediately see the commercial on tv, is it a synchronicity or a conspiracy? I believe most conspiracy theories to be so elaborate and so much more far fetched than actually believing that our thoughts create our realities. But, whatever - everybody picks their own way through their own life.
Our yard isn't really a yard - well, it doesn't have a 'lawn' per se. It's mostly just sandy dirt - in the summer it's dirt with some dead, beige weeds in the corners, and in the winter, it's soft, semi-squishy sandy dirt with green steadily encroaching on the bare spots, except where we usually drive the car (the yard is also the driveway, except for the beforementioned corners). Well, we had a serious rain last week and today I noticed that there's a little green around the edges of our dirt farm! *grin* Time to do the Dance of Joy! (Yes, Mom, you always told me I was easily amused.)
Today's story: "In November 89, my father celebrated his 59th birthday. We had a small party for him at home... A bunch of pictures were taken, but for whatever reasons, we forgot to take the roll of film to be developed. That following MArch (now 1990), my father grew very ill. Around the time he was admitted into an NYC hospital, we found the film. Upon having it developed, we found something very disturbing... We had taken a picture of him holding up his birtday cake. In the picture, however, you could see right through him. He was literally transparent. Naturally, I figured it was possible that it was a trick of the camera-that the picture was somehow double exposed. However, I noticed that the cake itself appeared to be solid, while his form was not. I showed only my mom the picture. We said nothing to my Dad. As it turned out, Dad had cancer and died late in October of 1990, just a few weeks shy of his 60th birthday. Strangely enough, the picture disappeared not too long after after. I scoured the house, rummaging through boxes, photo albums and closets. It had simply vanished." (from Shadowlands)
My sister sent this to me today *grin* - I'm going to pick out a few of my favorites, having grown up in the Syracuse/Liverpool area and gone to Clarkson University in Potsdam, which is about an hour south of Montreal and Ottawa, to give you and idea...
YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM UPSTATE NEW YORK WHEN ... * You design your Halloween costumes to fit over a snowsuit * The mosquitoes have landing lights * You have more miles on your snow blower than your car * TrueValue Hardware on any Saturday is busier than the toy stores at Christmas * Driving is better in the winter because the potholes get filled with snow * You think everyone from New York City has an accent * You think sexy lingerie is tube socks and a flannel nightie with only eight buttons * Your snow blower gets stuck on the roof * You've ever kept food cold by putting it on the back porch * You find -20F a little chilly * You attended a formal event in your best clothes, your finest jewelry and your winter boots * You can play road hockey on ice skates * Shoveling the driveway constitutes a great upper body workout * You know the 4 seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction * The municipality buys a zamboni before a bus
